Thursday, March 07, 2013

Notes from #lpcldr this fine morning

The Globe has a misguided header but a somewhat interesting report nevertheless: "Ontario, B.C. have biggest say in Liberal leadership race." Since every riding is equally weighted for voting purposes, technically those provinces don't have the biggest say in the race. What is nevertheless interesting is the remaining fact of the large number of sign-ups in both Ontario and BC as opposed to other provinces:

"More than half of the eligible voters in the race are in Ontario (125,000) and B.C. (40,000), giving those provinces a bigger say in the vote than their relative share of the overall Canadian population. The Atlantic provinces are also slightly overrepresented in the party’s list of eligible voters, while Quebec and the three Prairie provinces are clearly under-represented."

The two chunks from Ontario and B.C. stand out as successful efforts and may have been the overall point of the newsworthiness of the report. Of the top tier of candidates, one is from B.C., two are from Quebec. The point could also have been for the Globe to say look, we have a copy of the riding breakdown.

“To guarantee, as opposed to just hope, that the Conservatives will not form the next government, even in a minority, I personally would not oppose the concept of a one-time ‘strategic alliance’ of the main opposition parties.”

...

“While David Tilson may have out-polled the second-place party in the last election by a wide margin, the combined opposition vote was essentially even with the Conservatives,” he said, “and the total turnout was quite low.

“Mix in the variable of a single progressive candidate, add the momentum from a two or three party strategic alliance to defeat Harper, and the result is pure synergy. “There would be more citizens active during the election campaign, which would result in more voters coming out and, even in Dufferin-Caledon, there are more progressives than there are pure Conservatives.”

The report canvasses others who are not as positive about the idea, to be fair, but none of it is particularly surprising and a bit of a re-hash of the same arguments. No one seems to think about the new supporters signed up and the ongoing opportunity they present for Liberals, for example. Innovation can occur beyond the scope of this leadership race. Look at all the activist groups who have been growing by leaps and bounds.

Dufferin-Caledon is not on the list of the subset of about 57 ridings where the Conservative won with less than 50% of the vote in 2011 and where progressive parties might target their efforts, subject to 2015 realities, as a first tier seat. Interesting to see it being added into the mix by someone on the ground who wants to see the Conservative Tilson defeated.